


Recruitment Problems

by lirin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Tomorrowland (2015)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, crossovering treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 15:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12345777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Some people get an owl; some people...don't.





	Recruitment Problems

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).



They had sent recruiters out three times now. It was a big proceeding each time; Frank told the story of what came before, and Casey made a speech, and there was lots of clapping.

The recruiters’ return wasn’t nearly as much of a big deal. They would wander the world until they ran out of pins, then drop by one of the portal locations and slip back into Tomorrowland to resume their other duties. There was a record-keeper who took note of their return, and eventually people would notice that the workshops had grown more crowded again, but it really wasn’t something Casey paid particular attention to.

But the third time was different. Casey had worn herself out trying to play Marco Polo in the multi-level pools (and yelling at Nate for peeking when he was It) and was taking a well-deserved nap when Frank started hammering her door down. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she yelled grumpily, dragging herself across the room. “What’s wrong?”

“The recruiters are back,” Frank said.

“Yeah, they’re supposed to come back. What were you hoping they would do, go rogue?”

Frank sighed. “Casey.”

“Yeah?”

“They’ve only been gone three days. That’s far too soon.”

“What have I told you about looking on the bright side? Maybe they got lucky and stumbled across way more dreamers than usual.”

“They all still have all of their pins, and none of them got very far. They say they just suddenly had a strong desire to return home.”

Casey frowned. “That doesn’t sound good. Do you think someone interfered with their programming?”

“That’s what they want us to find out,” Frank said. “Thalia’s the one who got back most recently, so hopefully there’s still some sign of her mysterious assailants. We’re going to take her with us and retrace her steps.”

“And what, get jumped by whoever took her out?”

“That’s the general idea, unless either of us can come up with a better suggestion in the next thirty minutes.”

Thirty minutes later, with no other workable ideas, they collected a handful of supplies and Thalia, and walked through the portal.

The portal opened into a small forest in England, and was far enough from any cities or villages that their arrival shouldn’t have been noticed. Casey pulled out a meter to take some readings and make sure there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But before she’d done more than boot it up, it became clear that something out of the ordinary was indeed going on, as a flash of light flared from behind a nearby tree and shot straight towards them. Casey, Frank, and Thalia scattered for cover and pulled out weapons of their own.

“What are they shooting at us?” Frank called. “Can we disable it?”

“It doesn’t look like any weapon I’ve ever seen,” Thalia said.

“Maybe it’s what they used on you earlier and they just got you from behind,” Casey said. “You had to have been hit by something for your programming to suddenly prioritize going home over recruiting, right? I wonder if they can use it on both humans and androids. Our brains are completely different, but maybe…” She ducked as another flash of light shot over her head. “Can you see who’s shooting at us? I can’t shoot at somebody I can’t see!”

“All of our electronics are going haywire!” Frank snapped.

Thalia poked her head out of the branches of the tree above his head. “I climbed up twenty feet to reconnoiter. There’s quite a few people in the forest. I wasn’t able to get a good glimpse of their weaponry, though. Whatever it is, it must be small.”

She broke off as a voice boomed close by. It sounded as if it were coming from all around them. “Surrender! We have you surrounded!”

“How many is ‘quite a few’?” Frank asked Thalia.

She slid out of the tree, hands raised. “Enough for us to be hopelessly outnumbered,” she said. “But on the bright side, maybe they’ll tell us what their problem is.”

“Yeah, and shoot us after,” Casey grumbled. She stepped forward to stand next to Thalia.

“That’s why I’m transmitting everything back to base in real-time this time,” Thalia said cheerfully.

“Great, that makes us feel so much better about the insurmountable odds,” Frank said, but he joined them as well.

A crowd of people emerged from out of the forest, on all sides. All appeared to be human, but their features could not be discerned due to their long cloaks. Each held a long stick in one hand. An apparent leader stepped forward, no more identifiable than the rest. “You have been stealing our best and brightest students,” he said in a gravelly voice. “We will no longer stand for this.”

“Hey, there’s no stealing here,” Casey said. “Nobody’s joining us who doesn’t want to.”

“You are concealing their options from them,” the man in the cloak replied. “Owls cannot pass through your portals. Once our potential students travel to your land, they have no way to receive a Hogwarts letter.”

“Owls?” Casey asked.

Talking over her, Frank exclaimed, “ _Potential_ students? So they’re not even your students yet?”

“Well, no, but they would all have attended Hogwarts had they not had its existence concealed from them.”

“What’s Hogwarts?”

“Forget that, what’s the deal with the owls?” Casey asked.

“Owls carry messages,” the man said. “It’s like the Muggle post, but smarter.”

“And Hogwarts?” Frank said. Casey glared at him. This would have gone more smoothly if they’d picked one person to be in charge of negotiations. The only problem was that Frank would have probably wanted that one person to be him.

“Hogwarts is the school where we train young witches and wizards in the use of magic. Our enrollment has had a distressing downturn this last year. It took us until now to ascertain that you Tomorrowland people were the ones stealing our best potential students, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen any more.” He raised the stick he held, its tip sparking.

“Wait!” Casey said. “Do you even know what the purpose of Tomorrowland is?”

He lowered the stick a fraction. “No. Does it matter?”

“The reason Tomorrowland recruits the best and the brightest is to give them the resources they need to figure out how to protect and improve the future of our world,” Casey said. “It’s your world as much as it’s ours, so don’t you think that’s something you need too?”

“Not at the expense of our students.”

Frank stepped forward. “Who says they can only do one thing or the other? What if, after you’ve taught them how to use magic, whatever that entails—what if you let them spend some time at Tomorrowland _then_? Maybe their different backgrounds would even help them come up with ideas nobody else would think of.”

The man’s stick was now pointing at the ground again, and what little they could see of his face looked less angry. “We’ll take your proposal under consideration,” he said. “In return, we ask that you not recruit any of our potential students.”

“Just send us a list,” Frank said. “And if you want to put together a delegation of, uh, Hogwarts graduates, you’ll be welcome any time.”

“It will be taken under consideration,” the man said. He spun where he stood, and disappeared. His companions followed suit, and within seconds, Casey, Frank, and Thalia were alone again.

Casey sighed. “At least they weren’t as trigger-happy as some people. What do you think they meant by ‘magic’?”

“No idea,” Frank said. “Hopefully it’s something that will be useful for us, along the lines of Clarke’s third law, and not just a bunch of people standing in a circle chanting ‘abracadabra’.”

Thalia shivered. “Don’t say that word.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a sort of feeling, like the feeling I had that I wanted to go home. But you shouldn’t say it.”

Frank sighed. “If they send that delegation, we’ll have to ask them to fix what they did to our recruiters, too.”

Casey activated the pulse that would request reactivation of the portal, and they pushed their way through the overgrowth back to the exact spot where they’d come through. “ _If_ they ever show up.”

“Yeah.”


End file.
